I didn't wait for an answer. I didn't need to see his tears. I simply turned my back on him. I walked away, my white coat billowing slightly, through the secure glass doors of my laboratory, leaving him utterly alone in the cold, unforgiving lobby of the empire I had built without him.
As I sat at my desk, exhaling a breath I felt I had been holding for twenty years, the silence of the laboratory was broken.
My secure personal phone rang with an incoming encrypted international call. The caller ID flashed briefly: Stockholm, Sweden.
I picked up the receiver, my heart suddenly pounding against my ribs. I pressed the phone to my eye, listening to the heavy, prestigious, and accented voice of the chairman of the Nobel Committee's selection committee.
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